Research Expertise

Description

Research interests are wide and embrace both fundamental scientific and applied technological areas. The major connecting theme has been matter transport through solid materials with application to solid state electrochemistry, ionic crystals, electroactive polymers and advanced battery systems, transdermal transport of drugs and other molecules and the low and very high temperature corrosion of metals, alloys and ceramics. Both experimental measurements and computational atomistic simulation techniques have been applied, where possible in complementary studies, to increase understanding of the fundamental transport processes in these systems. Research currently in progress includes atomistic simulation studies of polymeric materials where the intention is use MD to extend studies of drug delivery systems to determine the molecular processes that control the release of the active constituents. Another project, in response to the Science and Technology against drugs initiative of the Irish Government, was in collaboration with the Toxicology Department of the Irish State Laboratory. The objectives were to develop new automated techniques to extract and quantify a range of drugs of abuse from biological samples. Also in the general area of analysis a joint project has been recently completed with Institut National d'Environement Industriel et des Risques (France) is evaluating solid adsorbents for sampling applications for a range of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the ppmv concentration range.

Secretary 'Fourth Europhysical Topical Conference on Lattice Defects in Ionic Crystals, Dublin, 1982. Served on International Advisory and Programme Committees for later Conferences in the series at Madrid 1986, Gröningen 1990, Lyon 1994, Keele 1998 and Riga 2002.1982-Present